


Hypnagogic

by sciencefictioness



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Power Dynamics, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, Timothy Stoker's Slow Descent Into Madness, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26689126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: The way it hurts feels like home.
Relationships: Danny Stoker/Tim Stoker, Elias Bouchard/Tim Stoker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	Hypnagogic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [besselfcn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/gifts).



> Mind the tags and archive warnings, friends!

He does not know it is the last time he will get to touch Danny like this; the last time he will get to taste him. It wouldn’t have changed anything, except that he wouldn’t have let go. 

Tim is always so fucking reverent. This is something he should not have. Something he does not deserve. Something he takes in spite of the whole world telling him it is wrong. Almost the whole world, anyway.

Danny does not tell him that.

Danny sinks his fingers into Tim’s hair and holds Tim’s mouth against his cunt. Danny arches in Tim’s rumpled sheets, toes curled against the blankets as he pleads for more. As he begs, thighs shaking,  _ please, please, please. _

As though Tim wouldn’t give him everything.

As though Tim wouldn’t die for him, a thousand times. As though he wouldn’t break himself to make his brother smile.

Danny comes against his mouth with a loud whine, tugging at Tim’s hair, thighs closing tight around his jaw. When he finally pushes him away Tim mouths up his body to find him smiling wide. Bright white teeth, dazed green eyes, dark hair sweaty and plastered against his face. Tim brushes the wet strands back off his forehead, kissing him slowly. Danny loves the taste of himself. Tim cannot blame him.

He presses into Danny’s cunt, hands cupping his jaw on both sides, feeling him tremble. Listening to the sounds he makes.

_ Fuck, Tim, yeah, yeah… _

Tim is reverent, but he isn’t always gentle. 

Sometimes reverence is a violent thing. 

Danny likes when he leaves bruises. Likes to feel owned. To know how much Tim wants him. Tim pins him down and fucks him ragged and Danny is loud and euphoric as he takes it all with a dazed smile. Tim sucks bruises into Danny’s throat in places everyone will see. 

Tim comes inside him, because Danny will protest if he does not. He is long past paying any attention to the shame of it. Tim can dwell on that later, when he is all alone and already miserable. Shame isn’t something Danny understands, not the way most people do.

Not when it comes to his brother.

They lay together, breathing hard. It’s too hot to be touching but neither one of them pulls away. Tim collapses on Danny’s chest, running his fingers over the scars he’s earned climbing mountains and jumping off cliffs.

Scars he’s earned crawling into Tim’s bed with those fucking eyes of his and asking for everything. Danny sifts through Tim’s hair, humming a song he can’t quite place, lilting and melancholic. It is a song he is always humming. Tim does not ask what it is called.

“Gonna head out soon. If I don’t go tonight I’ll have to wait until the weekend is over, and it’ll be a pain in the ass.”

Danny is going to the theatre, to pick his way past the modern world and see the old pieces left behind underneath.

The discarded cocoons of its previous life, he said once, his thumb in Tim’s mouth. History clings, he said  _ more _ than once, hips writhing and lashes fluttering until Tim could not think at all.

Now he is leaned up against Tim’s pillows, legs splayed. Between his thighs is a tangle of dark hair. Marks from Tim’s teeth. Tim’s come dripping from his cunt. Tim wants to press his mouth to it and eat him out again, but Danny is probably too sensitive, so Tim will settle for sleep.

“You could stay,” he says, nosing along one of the scars on Danny’s ribs. 

Danny hums again. There is a finality to the way he is playing with Tim’s hair now.

He is already gone.

“Need to be on my way if I’m going to have enough time to have a proper look.”

When Tim can breathe again Danny eases out from underneath him to pull on his briefs and a pair of jeans. 

“You’re not taking a shower first?” Tim asks, eyes half closed as he nestles himself deeper into Danny’s pillow.

Danny shakes his head and pulls a black hoodie on over the worn band t-shirt he’d stolen out of Tim’s closet. It’s too hot for a jacket but Danny needs to be inconspicuous. He doesn’t relish the thought of Danny sneaking around the Royal Opera House, but Tim has spent long enough trying and failing to talk him out of going and he doesn’t bother bringing it up again.

It doesn’t matter how much money Danny has, or how much clothing of his is already shoved into Tim’s closet. He’ll find Tim’s shirts anyway. Tim’s sweaters, Tim’s jackets. Pull them on without asking, even though they’re almost too small.

They look better on him anyway. It feels so good to have him close. Tim wishes he would just stay, but it isn’t in Danny to stand still.

“Gonna have to take a shower when I get back, aren’t I?”

Danny kneels on the bed and bends down, kissing Tim’s temple. He buries his face in Tim’s hair and just breathes for a moment.

“Love you,” he says before standing again, clicking off the lamp on the bedside table. “Should be back around before morning. You can make me breakfast before you go to work.”

“Like hell I will,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. “Love you too,” he calls just before Danny closes the door behind him and slips out into the dark.

It is one in the morning when Tim finally calls it a night and climbs into bed, and Danny isn’t home.

Tim will never see him again.

-

Tim will see him a thousand times. It will not be enough.

-

Tim wakes with a start to the feeling of falling. There is no dream to accompany it, or at least not one he can remember. He simply jerks upright with a gasp, heart fluttering in his chest and a sensation of wrongness that makes him think of car crashes and house-fires— that moment right after tragedy where it feels as though things can be undone, somehow, except they cannot and it shifts into desperation instead. 

Into panic. Into grief.

Into pain.

Tim wakes up with dawn light filtering eerie through the windows of the living room, illuminating the hallway outside his bedroom in ethereal shades of blue. For a long moment he is disoriented, like he is somewhere unfamiliar. The shadows are shaped wrong. His room is too big and too small all at once. 

Danny isn’t in his bed. 

It’s hot enough that Tim shakes off sleep to trudge to the kitchen to drink a glass of water. The coolness of it does nothing to help Tim feel like he is truly awake. There is a fog of unreality to everything as he puts down his empty glass and heads back towards the bedroom.

Danny is in the living room, sitting utterly still in Tim’s armchair. It is too dark to even notice the rise and fall of his chest. Tim cannot remember ever seeing him this unmoving, not even in sleep.

“Shit, you scared me. How’d it go, then?” Danny does not answer.

Danny does not blink. Something twists in Tim’s stomach, and he swallows and tries to smile.

“Find anything?” Tim asks. Danny nods slowly. Tilts his head like he is thinking.

His face is wet with tears. He mumbles something, but Tim can’t understand. The last time he saw Danny cry, they were children. He doesn’t know if he is awake. It feels real, though; the fear roiling low in his gut. The need to put his hands on Danny and keep him from disappearing. 

“Hey what’s the matter? What happened?”

Tim crouches in front of him and reaches up to touch his face. 

He doesn’t  _ feel  _ right. Doesn’t  _ look  _ right. Even his breathing is wrong somehow. His stillness is making Tim feel sick; dizzy. Queasy. It is as though a stranger has come into Tim’s house, dressed in Tim’s clothes. 

Wearing Danny’s skin.

Tim shoves the thought down and wipes away Danny’s tears with his thumbs.

“You hurt?” Tim asks. Danny is still shaking his head, but Tim doesn’t think it is in answer. 

There’s no blood on Danny’s clothes, no sign that he is injured. Tim tries to look at his pupils, to see if he has a concussion, but it is difficult to tell. His eyes are so black, and it is hard to find air when they are fixed on him. They sit together in the silence for a long while. The sun does not keep rising outside the windows. The shadows do not change.

“Come to bed with me,” Tim says finally, when he feels like he might shatter.

Danny does not move, but when Tim pulls him upright he follows like a puppet on strings. He coaxes him into bed, crawling in behind Danny and cradling him against his chest. Danny is bigger than him but he goes easily, tucking himself into Tim like he has a thousand times. Tim can barely hear him breathing. He is as cold as ice.

“The show must go on,” he mumbles. 

He sounds manic. He sounds high. Tim is afraid he is on something.

Tim is afraid he is not.

“Go to sleep, Danny,” Tim says.

Danny clings to his ribs and squeezes so hard it will bruise.

Tim waits for him to fall asleep. If he had known, he would have stayed awake.

If he had known, he would have been more afraid.

-

Danny is gone when Tim wakes again a few hours later, the place in bed where he’d been sleeping gone cold. Tim isn’t surprised, somehow, but there is that feeling again. Like he’d been on the edge of sleep and falling.

Like he can stop himself before he hits the ground.

He wants to believe that maybe he’d been dreaming, but he can’t; there are bruises on his ribs in the shape of Danny’s fingers.

There are rough sketches on the coffee table that had not been there when he went to sleep. They are all drawn in Danny’s hand. Tim knows what Danny’s art looks like, the way the lines are shaped. How he leaves things messy and doesn’t care if they are finished. All that matters is the shape of things. The impression of a tree, or a dog, or a man.

The impression of a clown, all dark hair and diamonds on their face.

Danny’s notes are on the table too, underneath the sketches, detailing just how he got into the theatre. Tim doesn’t have a choice. It’s like falling. Like breathing.

Tim goes.

-

The is pain, and then there is this; it is not Danny, he tells himself. He doesn’t know if he is lying. It isn’t like losing his parents.

It is like losing a limb. Like losing himself. Tim doesn’t go back to the theatre. They would not let him leave again; he would not let himself leave without Danny.

Tim goes to the Magnus Institute and applies for a job.

-

He is in Research first. It’s easy enough to get hired on with his credentials. The head of the Institute usually does the interviews, they say; he’s out, but he’s already given Tim the okay, pending anything untoward in their meeting. It is a simple thing to sweet talk his way into a job. Working in research is boring, mostly, but he has time on his hands and access to the kinds of books and information he needs to research whatever it was that took his brother. 

Tim still reaches for him in the dark. There is something growing inside him with every day he endures without Danny in the world. Everything has that wrongness to it now, like he is viewing it all through an unflattering filter on his phone.

He spends his time buried in the library; Tim reads about the circus. Reads about Russia. Reads about Joseph Grimaldi. He chases leads down to one dead end after another, but at least he is doing something, he tells himself. At least he has not simply let go.

He stands among rows of old books and rooms full of things that are meant to be haunted and feels like he is suffocating. Is Danny gone? Is he dead? Is he alive?

Is he alive and wishing he were dead?

Danny comes to him in dreams, tears on his face, shaking his head. Danny comes to him skinned alive, reaching out to touch Tim’s face, smearing blood as his muscles flex and ooze.

Danny crawls into his bed at night when the world has stopped turning. His mouth is warm and wet and he is always crying.

Tim takes him anyway. It is all he has. He will not let it go.

It isn’t long before he gets drafted into the Archives. He meets Elias for the first time,  _ I do like to keep… a closer eye on things down there, as it were.  _

Elias is smaller than Tim but it is difficult to notice. He takes up more space, somehow. 

Elias looks in his eyes and Tim feels strangely exposed.

_ Do look after Jon for me. You know how he is. _

Tim doesn’t know, but he learns. Jon is stretched taut like a piano string ready to snap.

Tim thinks he knows how to fix that— he does, and he doesn’t.

It is easier when someone isn’t already playing the piano, all the wrong notes and far too much sustain.

The work is less tedious than in Research, if not by much. Sasha is capable and funny and Tim almost regrets sleeping with her because she is so much more suited to friendship than anything he tried to make of them. It is only once, when they are both drunk, but things aren’t strained between them. She is too good for that. Tim doesn’t deserve her.

Martin is easy— easy to work with, easy to fluster.

  
Easy to get in bed. Easy to please. There is something warm about him that soothes Tim, even if he is pining quietly for Jon all the while. Tim cannot hold it against him. 

Not when he is doing it, too, pointing all his yearning towards someone long gone. At least the person Martin wants is  _ alive. _

Jon is too serious and too stern and too tense and it is a delight to push through all that and break him into pieces. It is casual, the way it is always casual, now. Tim pins Jon down on his bed and presses his face into Jon’s cunt and thinks of Danny.

Tim fucks the anxiety out of him, at least for a while. They aren’t suited for grand romance, but it feels good to have someone’s nails scratching down his back. Someone moaning in his ear.

It feels good to please someone. To do something thoughtless. Tim doesn’t leave bruises.

Jon doesn’t belong to him. It is better for everyone.

Danny had belonged to Tim, after all. He doesn’t belong in the Archives.

He isn’t good at saving things.

-

Jane comes and leaves her mark on Tim. Dozens of them, in fact. Tim runs through the tunnels underneath the Archives with his head spinning, trying to escape something that couldn’t, shouldn’t be real. There is fog in his lungs instead of air. 

Danny is running beside him.

When the worms burrow down into his flesh, it feels like he has done this before; been scarred. Been consumed. 

Feels like he has nourished some sprawling, ugly thing he cannot see or understand. They dig out the worms, and pieces of Tim. There is a rightness to the way he looks, now; pitted and eaten alive.

Unmistakably damaged. The hole inside him where Danny isn’t looms larger than the holes in his skin. They don’t heal like they should. They are sore, and swollen, and infected.

Sometimes, Tim digs them deeper. 

The way it hurts feels like home.

-

He is still bleeding from a dozen different wounds when Danny comes again. The world is painted in shades of moonlight and nothingness. There are no clocks ticking. 

Everything is frozen. Tim finds him in bed, shadows under his eyes and bright white teeth, stitches running around his throat like a seam. He smiles and blood trickles down his chin. He isn’t breathing.

Danny arches in his sheets and lets his thighs fall wide. He’s pale, still, and hypoxic, but his cunt is wet and inviting. There is come dripping out of him. Tim knows, somehow, that it is his own. 

He’s crying silently, shaking his head. Reaching for Tim.

Tim reaches back. Crawls on top of him and tucks his face into Danny’s throat, pressing into his cunt. Danny is cold all over but inside he is feverishly hot. His stitches are bleeding. They smear gore over Tim’s face as he fucks into Danny frantically, pinning his wrists over his head and making noises that sound like he is wounded.

_ I love you,  _ he says.  _ I love you, I love you. Danny. _

_ Danny,  _ please.

He comes into him with a sob. Tim cannot keep his eyes open.

When he wakes the room smells like sex. Danny is gone.

There are streaks of gore on his cheeks. On his mouth. Tim retches into the toilet until his stomach aches under the strain.

Tim sits on the floor with his face in his hands and cries.

-

There is always someone watching. Tim can feel it on the back of his neck. Can see it in his peripheral vision. Can hear it like white noise, somewhere almost out of earshot. Sometimes it is Jon.

Sometimes it is not.

Even when it isn’t, it still feels like Jon’s fault.

-

Tim stands in his living room in the dark. Everything is ethereal blue the way it was when Danny came back. 

When he didn’t come back.

Jon is outside his house, sitting across the street and failing to be inconspicuous. He thinks one of them killed Gertrude. Tim did not, but whoever did, he does not blame them.

He can understand the impulse to kill an Archivist. To put bullets in them, or maybe knives.

To put his fingers around their throat and squeeze. Tim got eaten alive for Jon, and that is not enough. 

Tim is still being eaten alive. 

It will never be enough.

-

Sasha is at least angry with Jon for his invasive prodding, fingers pressing down into all the pieces of their lives that are meant to belong to them and not to the Institute. She is not angry enough— not as angry as Tim, but it is something.

Martin is worried for Jon. Worried  _ for  _ Jon. Jon with a scar behind his ear in the same place as Tim. Jon with his wounds that have healed, when Tim has seen him picking at them. When Tim is still bleeding and sore. 

Looking at Jon is like looking in a mirror, except that his reflection blames him for things he has not done. Blames him for the air in his lungs and the light in his eyes. Blames him for not just laying down and letting everything take him; the worms, and the darkness, and the strangers.

It is not so much different than his reflection, after all.

Elias has to know.

Elias has to  _ know.  _ He sits in his office with this place sprawling out around him, falling apart in stages, Jon documenting it with such dogged determination that it makes Tim sick inside. Jon sifts through pictures of Tim’s house. Printed copies of his resume, his school transcripts, his papers from when he transferred into the Archives. He combs through it like he will find answers but there are only more questions.

Elias says,  _ everyone copes with trauma in different ways. _

Elias says,  _ Jon is doing the best he can with the tools at hand. _

Elias says,  _ I’ll talk to him.  _

_ I’m keeping a close eye on things. _

_ I understand that you’re upset, but do try and be patient; he’s been through a lot. _

_ Jon  _ has been through a lot.

Tim ran through the tunnels with worms digging into his skin and no air in his lungs and the ghost of his brother at his heels. Tim lay in a quarantine bed with chunks of flesh gouged out of his arms and chest and throat and legs and hand. Out of his face. Tim trailed his fingers over what used to be the smooth expanse of his bicep to learn the pitted scars of himself in the dark.

Tim watched a stranger pull the skin off of something that was and was not his brother, but  _ Jon  _ has been through a lot.

Elias watches Tim with furrowed brows, head cocked to the side in question— as though Tim is an animal that might be rabid, and Elias isn’t sure what he’ll do. If he should rein him in.

If he should put him down.

Elias looks at Tim like he is an animal that needs slaughtering.

They show Jon the footage of the day Gertrude was killed, and it doesn’t matter, the way Tim knew it wouldn’t. Jon is buried in paranoia like some diver gone too far underwater, uncertain which direction is up even with bubbles rising all around him. There is air, and the sun, and he cannot find his way there. Tim has lost his patience.

Tim would let him drown, if only Jon wasn’t dragging him under the waves alongside him.

He goes into the tunnels, sometimes. 

Sometimes, when he is tired, Danny is there. He is dressed in Tim’s clothes. His nose is bleeding. 

_ I missed you,  _ he says, head tilted to the side, stitches around his neck stretching.

Tim has missed him, too.

Tim presses him into the stone walls of the tunnels and tucks his face into Danny’s throat. He traces the stitches with his mouth and they taste like rust. Danny wraps his legs around Tim, and it is easy to take his weight. He is lighter than he should be. Lighter than he used to be when they did this together. Tim works his belt open and presses into Danny; it is hot, filthy with his come like always. 

They kiss and there are stitches on Danny’s tongue, as though it has been cut out and sewn back in again. He wonders if it hurts.

He does not ask.

He does not stop.

He shakes apart, filling Danny with bursts of heat. Danny’s teeth find the curve of his shoulder, far sharper than they should be, like he is biting down with a mouth full of eyeteeth. He breaks the skin, and Tim whines, and seeks his lips again. They kiss until Tim drifts away. When he comes back to himself he is sitting at his desk, night having long since fallen. He doesn’t remember coming back. The Archives are quiet. 

Tim lifts his hand and presses it into the bite mark on his shoulder. It’s under his shirt, but there is no stain. Back home in the mirror, it looks like an old wound, bruised but fading.

Elias says,  _ how have you been sleeping, Tim? _

Tim doesn’t know if he’s been sleeping. Tim doesn’t know if he is awake, right now.

Elias says,  _ some rest will serve you well. _

Tim laughs and laughs and when he finally stops Elias is not there at all. Jon is losing his mind but Tim keeps doing his job, like it might help him hold on to the last threads of his sanity when he has already come unbound at the seams. 

Elias says,  _ take care of yourself, Tim. I know this place can wear on you. _

He thinks about quitting and gets nauseated, like even the idea is repulsive and he cannot begin to stomach it. Tim starts writing a resignation letter and wakes up on the floor with a nosebleed, all the lights put out and no one left to see. 

He sleeps, or he doesn’t, but he dreams either way.

-

Jon says he is sorry.

It is not enough.

Jon tells him to leave. It is not enough.

Something that isn’t Sasha chases them through the tunnels. Something that isn’t human chases them through a door. It is the wrong door, but it doesn’t feel any different than the rest of Tim’s life.

He is in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong things. The hallways are endless.

Time passes, and it doesn’t. Martin is there. It doesn’t help.

Danny is there, and it does.

-

When they finally get back to the Institute, they find a body waiting for them. They don’t find Sasha. Tim isn’t surprised on either account. The police want to know if he can help them find Jon. Tim wishes he could, but he can’t. Of course he can’t. He can’t do anything.

Nothing he does matters anymore. Jon is gone, at first. It should be a relief, but it is not. Tim does his best to do nothing at all; whatever it is they’re serving, however unwittingly, Tim doesn’t want to be part of it.

Then Jon comes back, and Elias…

Elias is a monster. Sasha is dead. Has  _ been  _ dead for over a year and nobody even noticed. He thinks of Sasha smiling, paging through some reference in the library or at her desk. Thinks of her straddling him with hazy eyes in his bed, both of them smelling like gin,  _ come on, Stoker, you can do better than that. _

Doesn’t think of her at all, because it isn’t  _ her.  _ Was never her. Sasha is a memory living corrupted in his thoughts.  _ Melanie _ gets to keep her. Melanie didn’t even know her.

It isn’t fair, and he’s furious, but it isn’t her fault.

Isn’t Jon’s either, not really, but Tim lays it at his feet all the same. It is easy to take all the rage in him and point it at someone. He doesn’t investigate leads anymore. Doesn’t make calls, or flirt with filing clerks, or dig through records. He spends his days telling everyone in the Institute who will listen that Elias isn’t human, that the Archives are cursed, that they should get out while they still can. No one listens. They just think Tim is unhinged.

Tim  _ is  _ unhinged.

Elias says,  _ you need time to adapt, I understand, but my patience won’t last forever. _

Elias says,  _ I know you’re feeling… volatile, but I would appreciate it if you could maintain a modicum of decorum in the workplace. _

Elias says,  _ go home Tim. Try and get some sleep.  _

_ We need you at your best. _

Tim’s best was skinned alive in a theatre that never existed.

Tim’s best comes to him in the dark with blood trickling from his ears. Cold hands, and a wet mouth.

When Tim closes his eyes, sometimes he sees Elias where his brother should be, eyes lit with something dark. Watching, watching, watching.

Tim wants to cut out his eyes. Wants to burn the Archives to the ground.

Wants to stand in the fire as it eats up everything Elias has ever loved. Wants to be eaten, too.

Danny comes more and more. He is humming that song again, the one that Tim will never know the words to now. His nails are black like he’s slammed his fingers in something, some of them scabbed over and threatening to fall off. He is painted in shades of blue and gray and bruise-violet, hair always slick with sweat, laying in tangles. His teeth are pink with gore. His mouth tastes like metal.

Tim kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him. Slides his fingers into Danny’s sweltering cunt. Goes to his knees to taste him.

Tim comes back to himself in bed with fresh bruises and streaks of blood on his hands. He doesn’t know if he’s been sleeping; if they are dreams, or if it is something else. Something worse.

Something real.

Whether it is made of exhaustion or evil, Tim cannot resist. He cannot leave, and he cannot stay. If he sleeps, his dreams don’t let him rest.

If he does not, there is always someone watching.

-

Elias calls Tim to his office.

Tim doesn’t go. There is nothing to make him; no consequences that would motivate him to go willingly to see what Elias needs, and nothing Elias needs that Tim wants to provide.

Elias comes down to Tim, instead. Trudges down into the communal office space that he shares with Martin and Melanie, their three desks positioned in different corners of the room. Melanie is gone, off plotting somewhere. Tim respects it, even if he feels like it’s futile. He doesn’t know where Martin is, but there’s no point in searching.

Wherever he is, he’s wishing Jon were back in the Archives instead of missing in action. He’s  _ worried  _ about him.

The thought makes Tim’s lip curl. 

Tim knows he is coming long before he gets there.

There’s a tape recorder he hadn’t noticed before, sitting on Melanie’s desk. He hasn’t seen many of them around lately— they tend to trail after Jon, not him. The tape is running.

Tim tries not to worry about what that means as Elias comes into the room.

He stands behind Tim as he pages through research— nothing for Jon, who has vanished again. Nothing for Martin, or Basira. It is the same dozen books about the circus he has read through a hundred times. The same handful of well-tread statements. Tim can feel him there watching, but he does not bother looking up.

“Hey there, boss,” Tim says, comparing dates in one statement to those in one of the books, trying to figure out timelines. “Get bored being spooky in your office? Decide to come down here and terrorize us more directly?”

Elias sighs. He’s standing close enough behind him that Tim can sense him; that wordless feeling of uncomfortable nearness.

“I wanted to have a discussion with you about your behavior of late. I would prefer to do so in my office, but it seems you’d rather have this conversation here.”

“My  _ behavior,”  _ Tim sneers, resolutely not glancing up from his work. “You mean being unhappy about being held hostage at a job I hate, surrounded by people I either despise or who won’t see reason, working for a boss who’s killed multiple people in cold blood just to keep them from ruining his schemes? I’m  _ sorry,  _ my bad. I’ll just work on that, then. Fix my  _ behavior  _ right up.”

Elias put his hand on the back of Tim’s chair, pushing down until the wood creaks. Tim feels it shifting underneath him, tilting him slightly back.

“Your work has been shoddy at best, and you’ve been ignoring Martin’s requests for assistance in following up statements in Jon’s absence almost entirely. Not to mention that you’re taking every opportunity to rant and rave at other Institute employees about how their boss is an ‘eldritch monstrosity out to destroy us all’, and missing work. Really, Tim. A little bit of consideration would go a long way to fostering a pleasant work environment.”

“Fire me, then. Missing too much, work not up to par…. Seems like you’ve got yourself a bad employee, boss. Only one way to deal with that.”

Tim closes one of his books and opens another, making notes on file he’s pulled. Elias is so close; if he were Melanie, he’d be trying to shove a pair of scissors into his eyes. Tim doesn’t think it would be that easy.

Still, his eyes linger on the black handles sticking up out of the cup full of pens on his desk, and he thinks about what they’d look like jutting Elias’ eye sockets dripping gore. Elias laughs.

Elias  _ laughs. _

“Fire you? And train a new archival assistant, with everything else going on? Tiptoe around some poor, oblivious fool? No, that won’t be necessary. We’re on the same side, Tim. Besides, letting you go out into the world with everything you know? A dangerous thing, for me and you both. The Archives are one of those places you don’t easily leave behind.” 

Tim wheels around in his chair, mouth twisted into something ugly. Something angry. He holds his hands out as if in offering, or maybe in surrender. Maybe in defense of himself.

Or maybe he just wants to fight.

“Then why don’t you just  _ kill me,  _ Elias? I’m sure it would be  _ so easy.  _ And you’d get away with it. Hell, you’d probably tell the others about it, and they’d still go about their day. ‘Oh poor Tim, nothing to be done about it, did you call around about that statement I left on your desk?’” Tim huffs a laugh and spins back around. “I’m not  _ Martin.  _ I’m not going to keep doing your dirty work for you, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t hate every moment here. You can fire me, or can kill me, or you can fuck  _ off.” _

Elias slides his hand up Tim’s bicep, dragging it slowly across his shoulder. Tim resists the urge to recoil. He doesn’t want to give Elias the satisfaction.

“Ultimatums have always struck me as so short-sighted. This, or that. It’s all so trite.” Elias palms the nape of Tim’s neck and squeezes. “I don’t think you’ve fully grasped the situation. Let me help you understand,” Elias says, leaning down to whisper in his ear. “This is  _ my  _ Institute. These are  _ my  _ Archives. You are mine, the way these bricks are mine, the way these books are mine. The way  _ Jon  _ is mine. All of it belongs to me, which means I can do anything I like.”

There is no warning before Elias slams his head down onto the desk hard enough to send stars swimming in his vision. It takes a moment for him to realize what happened, what  _ is  _ happening. After a moment Tim tries to stand up but Elias’ grip is like a vise on the back of his neck. He flails an arm back but can’t get a good angle, and Elias is standing too close for his legs to do much good. He’s pressed against Tim so tightly, Tim can feel every inch of him, from his calves to his thighs to his hips.

To how hard he is, grinding forward against Tim’s ass. Tim chokes and goes wide eyed but can’t seem to find any words.

“This is what you need isn’t it? To lay the blame for all the thoughtless things you’ve done at someone else’s feet, as though their guilt absolves your own. It is easier to be helpless instead of foolish, I suppose. Instead of selfish. If you’d like someone to blame, go on then. I’m an easy target, and I’ve always had a knack for it.”

“You… you,” Tim gasps out, trying and failing to shake off Elias’ hold.

It is almost impossible to get any air, but the few panicked breaths Tim manages to take in don’t help much. Elias is so much smaller than him; it should be impossible for him to pin Tim down so thoroughly, so easily, but then again he is more than just a man.

He’s a fucking monster, and Tim  _ belongs  _ to him. Maybe that is why it is easy.

Or maybe Tim is just pathetic. 

Maybe he doesn’t have it in him to resist the way he should. Maybe this is his fault, the way everything is his fault. He slaps ineffectually behind him, wrinkling papers under his hands and knocking things off of his desk and onto the floor. 

“I’ve tried to think of some way to make you understand that it would be best to keep your head down and do your work, but you’re just so  _ erratic,”  _ Elias says, running his free hand down Tim’s back in a slow caress. “The methods I might use on the others wouldn’t be quite as effective on you. There are horrible things I could show you, but you’re already made of a thousand awful memories, aren’t you? You need to be  _ shown  _ there is nothing for you to do but behave yourself. Put in your place more… directly.”

Elias tugs Tim’s belt open, pulling his trousers and briefs down in one smooth motion. There is a frantic sense of hopelessness that is rising in his chest but there is no give in Elias’ hands or Elias’ weight or Elias’ voice. 

“Don’t,” Tim coughs, gripping the edge of the desk as though it could ground him. As though  _ anything  _ could ground him. “Don’t, don’t… Elias,  _ don’t.”  _

_ Elias, please,  _ he thinks, but cannot say. Cannot give him that, even if he knows Elias can hear it anyway. That Elias can  _ see  _ it. He doesn’t know when Elias got his own belt open, but he can feel the hard line of his cock, snug against him.

“I know things have been hard for you since you lost Danny. I never bothered looking too hard at you, never thought it was necessary, but that was a mistake, wasn’t it? The things you’ve  _ seen.” _

Some of the panic gives way to fury, and Tim clings to it. Lets it settle between his teeth, and in his fists, and his jaw.

Elias huffs a laugh again, shoving three of his fingers into Tim’s mouth without warning. Tim sputters and tries to pull back but there is nowhere to go, so he bites down instead. Keeps biting until he tastes blood. Until it fills his mouth, and drips down his chin. Elias hums, letting Tim gnash his teeth for a moment before pulling back.

“Don’t you talk about my brother,” Tim hisses as soon as his mouth is empty. He can still taste Elias’ blood. 

“Oh, I’m not going to talk about him,” Elias says. There is the sound of static roaring louder in his ears. Tim looks at the tape recorder with eyes so wide they hurt, heaving in desperate breaths that do not fill his lungs and do not ease his dizziness. “ _ You’re  _ going to talk about him. He wasn’t ashamed of you the same way you were ashamed of him. Does that hurt you? That he loved you better? That he loved you  _ more?  _ Tell me about your brother, Tim. Tell me  _ everything.” _

There is something flowing through him like poison. There is light pressing at Tim from inside, until he is blinded in his blood and his chest and the place behind his sinuses. Until it wants to spill from his mouth. He bites it back until his nose starts bleeding and the pounding in his head feels like a knife. Nausea overwhelms him but there is nothing in his stomach; he gags, and dry heaves.

Elias presses blood-slick fingers into him, and he cannot clench his jaw around the truth any longer.

“I  _ loved  _ my brother. More than anything. More than I should, more… more than any brother should love his brother.”

Elias hums. Tim wants to ask  _ why—  _ why he is carefully coaxing him open, making sure it won’t hurt, but Tim knows the answer. This isn’t about pain. Anyone can  _ hurt  _ him.

This is about  _ power. _

“Go on,” Elias says, spreading his fingers open, gentle enough that unwilling little sparks of pleasure arc through Tim’s body. “Keep talking.”

Tim does.

“He used to sneak into my room at night when we were staying at my aunt’s house. We were too young, but I was so close to graduating and leaving for school, and he was terrified. He’d crawl into my bed under the covers and… and…” Tim chokes, gory saliva leaking from the corner of his mouth to pool on the papers there. Biting back the words makes his eyes feel like they might burst. 

“He’d kiss me,” Tim says, lifting an arm to hide his face. “He’d kiss me and take my hand and help shove my fingers into his cunt. I would eat him out, and fuck him, hiding under the blankets and trying so hard to be quiet. He’d have girlfriends, boyfriends, and so would I, but it never felt real,” Tim says, Elias’ fingers steadily working him open. “It didn’t feel like I was cheating on them with Danny. It felt like I was cheating on Danny with  _ them.”  _

Elias hums, and Tim doesn’t realize he’s pulled his fingers out until the head of his cock is pressing forward instead. 

“It didn’t feel real then, and it still doesn’t feel real now,” Tim says, thighs quaking. “There was always only Danny.”

There are tears running down his cheeks, and he sucks wet air in through his nose, glancing over his arm towards the door as Elias pushes in, in, into him. Anyone could come into the room and see them this way— Melanie, or Martin, or Basira. One of the researchers, or someone trying to give a statement. Tim wants someone to come and help.

Tim knows no one can help. Tim doesn’t want anyone to see him this way, weak and pathetic and worthless.

Doesn’t want them to see Elias  _ owning  _ him.

It does not hurt the way it should. It should hurt, Tim thinks. It should be agonizing, and it is not, and Tim hates himself. 

Tim wrenches his eyes shut and breathes and tells Elias everything there ever was to know about Danny as he fucks him slow and steady. Tells him about how Danny’s cunt tasted. How he would fuck Tim anywhere, everywhere, always. How he would get so jealous of Tim’s partners and leave hickeys and bite marks just to spite them. 

Tells him how Danny was everything he needed, and now he was gone, and Tim could never be whole again. Elias pulls memories from Tim; things he and Danny did together, something else he’s taken from him to feed the Eye. The last thing that was only for Tim, and now Elias owns it, too. 

Owns Danny, too.

Tim talks for so long that his voice is rough and hoarse by the time Elias pulls out of him and presses between his lips instead. He keeps his fingers between Tim’s teeth as he fucks his face, one thumb curled around the inside of Tim’s mouth, the other around his jaw. Tim doesn’t even think to resist. Doesn’t think to bite. Just lays there, limp and open as Elias comes down his throat and he swallows, swallows, swallows without prompting. The word  _ docile  _ comes to mind. The word  _ pliant. _

Tim cries but does not make a sound.

Elias says,  _ yes, there we go, just like that.  _

Elias says,  _ perfect. I knew you could do it, Timothy. Don’t you feel better now? _

Elias says,  _ take as much time as you need.  _

He says,  _ sweet dreams,  _ and leaves Tim laid out on his desk with his trousers around his knees, come and blood dripping over his lips. He does not know how long he stays there, nor does he remember leaving. Tim is simply in the tunnels all at once with his palms flat against the stone, retching onto the ground. It is nothing but bile. Elias’ come. Elias’ blood.

He falls down to his knees. He is shaking all over. Tim put his face in his hands and sobs. He can still feel Elias inside him.

He can still feel Elias watching.

-

He sees Melanie leaving Elias’ office, wild-eyed with her clothes rumpled, and recognizes something in her. It is something that lives in his chest. 

Something that hates Elias more than it needs to breathe. Tim can’t help her. 

Tim can’t help himself. He thinks of Danny.

He leaves an awl in her desk and doesn’t know why.

-

It is there as soon as he lays his luggage out on his bed and decides to start piling clothes inside; a sick, coiling sense of dread. Tim resists the urge to close his blinds for the hundredth time, or make sure his doors are locked. With the sort of things that would be after Tim, his deadbolt is the least of his problems.

He pushes through the wrongness of packing. Ignores the unease as he boards his plane. Tim covers his mouth with one hand and wrenches his eyes shut as it takes off. That out of place feeling dissipates some in the air, but every time he starts to doze off he jerks awake. 

Danny is in the seat next to him once, asleep on his shoulder, a puddle of damp gore under his mouth.

Then Tim jerks awake again, and he is gone.

He’s barely aware of his stop-over, landing in Malaysia, or stumbling to a hotel. He is so far away from London, so far away from the Institute; it should feel good. Tim wants it to feel good.

It doesn’t feel like anything at all. There’s a painting on the wall of a woman with a basket of flowers. The eyes are indistinct, but Tim takes it down and turns it towards the wall all the same.

It does not help the feeling that he is being watched, but Tim is not surprised.

-

It’s easy enough to find someone in the hotel bar willing to head back to Tim’s room with him. There is nothing for him in Malaysia besides drinking himself into a stupor and not thinking about Elias, not thinking about work, not thinking about Jon. He still thinks about Danny, of course. Especially when the pretty stranger he picked up at the bar kisses him and mumbles something in a language he can’t understand. Tim closes his eyes and thinks of stitches. Thinks of blood.

Thinks of Elias, and chokes back a burst of hysterical laughter.

There’s no mistaking what they mean when they palm at Tim’s crotch, tilting their head in question; Tim is soft and unresponsive. He hasn’t slept with anyone since— 

There’s static in his ears.

There’s a tape recorder on the table.

Tim kicks off his clothes and turns over onto his stomach, arching his hips into the air, a wordless invitation. The guy he’s with— Adam he thinks, Tim isn’t entirely sure— doesn’t complain. Just mouths at Tim’s back and presses his fingers into him and mutters things that sound approving. Tim lays his face against the blankets and stares at the tape recorder. It is already running. The faint whine of static continues.

Tim feels Elias’ stare like something metal between his teeth, sharp and unmistakable as it grinds against a filling. He barely notices as fingers slip out of him and are replaced with Probably Adam’s cock. The smell of detergent is overpowering in the fabric that’s scraping over his cheek. A housekeeper is rolling a cart loudly down the hall. Tim is in a hotel in Malaysia.

Tim is a thousand miles away. Tim’s body sways as Adam fucks into him rhythmically. His face is wet with tears. His head aches. Danny is sitting naked in the chair next to the table with the tape recorder. 

He parts his legs slowly; there are stitches running around his thighs like the tops of stockings. The skin above them is a different shade of grey than the skin below.

There are more stitches between his thighs, the thick black thread sewing his cunt closed. Danny reaches down and presses his fingers into himself, tearing through the sutures with a soft gasp. He arches in the chair, watching Tim with glassy eyes. There is blood trickling out of him now; the pearly shine of come.

Tim stares at his brother who is not there and drifts out of himself. 

When he comes back he is alone in the room. It is still dark outside. He tucks his face into his elbow and curls up into a ball. The tape recorder has stopped.

Then he starts crying, and it clicks on again.

-

In the morning he has the worst hangover he’s ever experienced, except it never goes away. His headache runs all the way down his spine. He’s nauseated when he moves too fast, like the worst kind of vertigo. He does his best to pretend he doesn’t notice.

Tim tries the bar again next night, and the next. He brings people back to his room— men, and women. It doesn’t matter who is in his bed, Tim’s body will not do what he wants. When he can’t get hard for a pretty woman in a black dress he tries to go down on her and the world goes fuzzy at the edges. 

He comes back to himself hours later with a nosebleed, alone in the room with the door standing open. He can’t fuck, can’t get anyone off. It’s been months since he’s gotten off himself, and before it felt like a choice, but now there is something like desperation in him.

All he is good for is parting his thighs and letting himself be used. 

Even with Danny watching, it is not enough.

-

He wakes up with blood caked around his nose, like it has been bleeding in the night. His bones are sore, all of them, as though they don’t fit inside him as they should. Tim’s hands shake when he runs them down his face. His palms come away streaked in fresh, bright red. He’s sweating all over, skin burning hot to the touch. If it is a simple fever, it is like nothing he’s ever experienced.

Nothing in Tim’s life is simple, anymore.

He staggers to the shower, trembling as he steps under the spray. It’s like ice on his skin, even with steam billowing out to fog up the mirror.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Tim still tries to clean up well enough to stumble down to the bar and attempt to get laid, but his nose won’t stop bleeding. Now there is also blood seeping out of his ears, and swelling in his mouth. He wipes at his eyes and his knuckles are smeared with gore.

It’s difficult to keep his feet; the dizziness is overwhelming. Then there is a ringing in his ears, and a feeling like electricity surging through him. Tim is aware of falling. Aware of smashing his head on the tile and landing badly.

Aware of shaking apart on the shower floor, his body too hot, too fast. It only lasts a moment.

It goes on for hours.

When the seizing stops he cannot open his mouth anymore. He crawls out of the bathroom, soaking wet and bruised all over. His jaw is locked like it has been wired shut. Climbing into bed is too much effort, so he pulls the blanket down onto the floor and lays there instead. Probably Adam wasn’t very gentle. Neither were the rest. Tim is still sore in all the wrong places.

Tim thinks of Danny.

Tim thinks of Elias.

Tim’s breath hitches, comes out in a shudder. It isn’t a decision he makes, but something he just suddenly knows.

Tomorrow, he is going back to London.

The ringing in his ears is gone all at once, the tightness in his jaw easing. He can still taste blood, but he doesn’t have to swallow anymore to keep it from oozing down his chin. 

He is going back to London, and all is right with the world, it seems. There is someone watching, and it feels like a caress.

All Tim can do is breathe, and even that is more than he wants to bear.

-

Tim doesn’t bother gathering most of his belongings; he leaves a half-dozen outfits and some books he’s already read behind, tucking his wallet and his passport into his pocket and wandering down to the docks. The harbor isn’t far from his hotel, and he’s got a few hours before his flight.

It’s early enough that things are very quiet. The sun hasn’t risen. There’s fog in the air that feels out of place for the climate. He stares out at the water, the ocean stretching out forever and ever, the land on the other side nothing but an empty promise. He could walk into the waves and never come out.

He could sink underneath them, and sleep, and never wake up again. 

There is electricity in the air for a moment, like white noise in his ears. When it fades away there’s a man standing next to him who wasn’t there before, nodding out at one of the ships in front of them; a worn looking cargo ship, metal containers on the surface painted a vivid red.

“Shipping out soon. Got a spot open on the crew if you’re looking for somewhere to go. Always room on board for a man alone in the world.”

The man is older, heavyset in a way that has Tim taking a step back instinctively. He’s got grey hair and a thick beard and bright, blue eyes. There’s a question in his gaze, but underneath that something close to amusement.

Tim is used to the feeling of being watched, but it isn’t usually like  _ this;  _ as though he is some small thing, cut apart and pinned to a dissection tray. This isn’t being  _ watched.  _

This is something else. Tim thinks of Elias against his will.

Tim is always thinking of Elias.

Part of Tim is tempted to take this stranger up on the offer. Watching land vanish on the horizon until there is nothing but empty sea all around has an allure he has never considered before; it would not be an escape, but it would feel good to disappear. The fog is thicker, he thinks. Clinging to him strangely.

The sensation of eyes on him is further away, if only for a moment.

Over the man’s shoulder, leaning against the wall in the mouth of an alley, is Danny. He’s dressed in his exploration gear, black clothes and thick gloves, hood pulled up over his head. His backpack is slung over his shoulder, and he has a mask over the lower half of his face. His eyes are brighter than they should be, shimmering eerily in the darkness. He shoves his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, shoulders rounded. Sullen.

Tim knows, somehow, that if he steps onto the deck of that ship, he will never see his brother again. Knows he’ll die out there on the water.

Somewhere worse, maybe. Danny is harder to see, now.

Even his ghost is better than nothing at all. Even being haunted is better than being alone.

The man makes a humming sound and nods his head.

“Ah,” he says, turning and walking towards the ship in front of them. “Not quite alone, then. Pity.”

He climbs onto the deck without looking back. It is only when the ship starts sliding away from the docks and out to sea that Tim notices the name on the side.

Even faced with another monster, he can’t manage to feel afraid. Danny is gone from the alley when he looks back, but Tim knows where to find him.

Heading back to the Institute feels like defeat just as much as it feels like going home.

-

It’s late when he finally gets there. Standing outside the back entrance feels like hovering next to his bed when he’s been awake too long. Tim puts his hand on the door and closes his eyes. 

Then he falls into it with a sigh. As soon as the familiar hallways of the Institute close around him, his fever seems to finally break. He can breathe easy. The ache seeps away from his bones.

His body carries him into the tunnels on auto-pilot. The Institute is a living thing around him, holding him close when he has been away so long. Tim presses his forehead against the rough stone of tunnel walls, letting out a noise that is somewhere between a sob and a sigh. He’s hard in his jeans, abruptly frantic. It is all Tim wants, suddenly; to feel something  _ good,  _ just for a moment. 

To let himself have it.

It doesn’t take long. A few minutes maybe, and Tim is leaning against the wall and shaking, come dripping down over his fingers. He’s crying, he thinks.

Elias is with him. Elias is not.

Elias is always with him in all the ways that matter.

He and Danny are alike in that.

-

Elias finds him in the Archives the next day when everyone else is gone. Tim is at his desk with papers spread out in front of him. He doesn’t know what’s on them, or remember taking them out.

Elias says, “Good to see you back at work. I trust you enjoyed yourself?”

Tim pins him with a glare, lip curling into a snarl.

“Go fuck yourself,” he spits. 

It feels good to be angry again. Feels good to point it at someone. Elias walks further into the room, moving around Tim’s desk to stand behind him.

Elias says, “When one doesn’t understand their place in the grand scheme of things, it does make things… difficult.” Elias lays his palm on Tim’s shoulder. Drags it up his throat. Curls his thumb around Tim’s jaw.

Tim clutches the edge of the desk and lets the fury roll through him, like fire eating up dry leaves in the sun. He doesn’t say anything.

There is nothing to say.

Elias says, “After working at the Institute a while, it can get a bit… possessive.” He slides his fingertips under Tim’s shirt. Lays his palm over Tim’s collar bones. “If you find yourself in need of company, your best bet is to find it here.” He huffs a laugh and drops his hand away. “Keep it in the family, so to speak. You understand, of course. Anyway, welcome back. Do let us know if you need anything.”

Elias is gone. Elias is there.

Tim sinks into the anger that is waiting behind his teeth, and clings to it. Lets it flare.

It is the only time he ever feels warm.

-

It would be so easy to find that warmth in someone else, even if it was fleeting. To pull them into his arms. Tug them into bed.

Jon would give Tim anything, if only he asked the right way. He is so desperate to be forgiven for things that Tim cannot cast aside. If he lets go of his rage, there is only emptiness underneath. Tim thinks of Jon and the scars that match his own, pitted flesh and ragged edges. Thinks of the shuddering, overwhelmed heat of him. Jon doesn’t know what to do with himself when he is feeling things he can’t control. Jon whines.

Jon trembles.

Tim misses it like he misses a limb, but pressing his bones into ashes won’t bring anything back.

Martin would be worried, then hopeful, then generous. He looks like he would shy away in bed, be uncertain when faced with someone else’s body, but he is not. Martin is so eager to please that all his nerves disappear and leave him hungry instead. Tim could just ask, and let Martin take care of everything. 

Martin would be thinking of Jon. Tim would be thinking of Danny. It would be so easy. He’d be using them, but that isn’t what stops him.

It is what Elias wants him to do. Tim goes home alone when he goes home at all. 

Danny is not there waiting.

-

They have been keeping things from Tim. Things about the circus. About Joseph Grimaldi. Martin asks, and asks, and everything spills from Tim like he is one of those hessian sacks, split open at the bottom and pouring out everything inside. His brother only comes to him when he is at the Institute, now. 

Danny is stuttering in and out of being in the corners while Tim tells Martin about the only thing in his life that has ever meant anything. Danny’s cheeks are stitched together, and when he opens his jaw, the inside of his mouth is visible between the threads. He shoves his fingers through them, curls them around his teeth. Rubs against his tongue, blood drooling out of mouth and down his chin. Still, somehow, he’s smiling. With his eyes, with his face. He’s a fucking monstrosity, black eyes and gory teeth and bruises all over.

He is still Danny. Tim is hard in his clothes.

He’s been trying to ignore him; he isn’t real. It is the Eye tormenting him. It is this place.

It is his mind. In the weeks since he returned from Malaysia, Tim has refused to touch him. Refused to look at him, or speak to him. Danny stands in the corner of his vision with sad eyes and black hands, tape recorders hissing with static when he comes too close. Tim holds onto his anger, breathing it in like a strong scent that will overshadow the reek of decay.

Now Martin and Jon and the others are trying to stop the circus. The Stranger. The Unknowing. Whatever it was that took Danny will be tangible; something he can reach out and touch.

Something he can  _ hurt.  _

Tim doesn’t give a fuck about the Institute, or Jon, or what Elias wants, but they aren’t going to take this away from him. Whatever their plans are, Tim is going, axe in hand. There is nothing else that matters.

All he needs is this.

Vengeance, and Danny, and sleep.

-

They’re leaving for House of Wax, soon.

Tim won’t be coming back. He can feel it in his chest, something close to grief. The kind of loneliness someone gets when they leave something behind. It isn’t the Institute he is leaving.

Danny won’t come with him. Tim can feel that, too, buried in his throat like a splinter that’s too big to swallow around. It is the last time he will see his brother, and he knows it.

He  _ Knows  _ it.

Knowledge, coming to him unbidden. His mouth tastes like dust, and his ears ring.

He goes down into the tunnels. There is no point in resisting anymore. Danny is waiting for him in a mostly empty room, perched on the edge of a desk that looks like it should have fallen to pieces years ago. He’s dressed in nothing but one of Tim’s old work shirts, left open to reveal an autopsy scar. Not a scar.

An open wound. A line of stitches leading from his groin to his sternum. It curves around his nave; to one side, then branches off into two separate incisions, one running underneath each collar bone. He’s leaning back, palms flat on the desk behind him, head tilted in question.

Danny says,  _ I missed you.  _

His mouth doesn’t move. He’s humming again. Tim crosses the room and Danny sits up to get closer.

Danny says,  _ I love you. _

Tim cups his face with both hands. Danny looks euphoric. 

  
Danny is a ghost.

Danny says,  _ stay with me. _

Tim leans in and kisses him. He can’t remember what it was like to bring their mouths together and not taste blood. To run his hands over his brother’s skin and not trace lines of thread. He thinks of Danny alive. 

Alive, alive, alive.

He isn’t alive underneath Tim, but it is closer. There are no more bruises, no more stitches. He is still so cold, but when he smiles there is no blood in his teeth.

Tim says,  _ I love you. _

Tim says,  _ I’ll see you soon. _

Tim doesn’t say anything. He presses Danny down against the desk and fucks into him slowly. Takes his time. Danny clings and whines and trembles, leaving bite marks that will linger after he is gone. 

After they both are gone.

There is someone watching, and Tim doesn’t fucking care. He tucks his face into Danny’s throat and sobs. Kisses him. Commits to memory the way Danny feels against him.

When everything starts to blur at the edges Tim holds on as tightly as he can, but eventually there is nothing he can do but close his eyes. It is hours later when he wakes up at his desk. There are fresh bruises on his throat.

He stacks up all the books on the circus in a neat pile.

Crawls into a bed that used to belong to Jon. Used to belong to Martin.

Closes his eyes again, and sleeps.

-

It feels good to have an axe in his hand.

The detonator feels better.

Everything is all wrong, but that is okay. Everything has been wrong for Tim for a long, long time. Dying isn’t something Tim fears. If there is nothing and nowhere after his heart stops beating, it will be better than this.

If there is something and somewhere, his brother is waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me nice things, here or on twitter @scifictioness


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